


Wondrous Compendium of Exquisite Knowledge

by internetofthings (coveredinfeels)



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Gen, Leitner Books (The Magnus Archives), Poor Life Choices
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-11
Updated: 2020-07-12
Packaged: 2021-03-04 18:55:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,263
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25201294
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coveredinfeels/pseuds/internetofthings
Summary: Soon after Jonathan Sims becomes Head Archivist, Tim finds a book on the way home from work and does not immediately set it on fire. This proves to be a terrible idea on his part.
Comments: 8
Kudos: 21





	1. Chapter 1

Despite what some people might have thought—what Tim might sometimes admit he encouraged them to think—he didn’t actually spend every evening out snogging his way through the entire population of London.

Nope, sometimes after a long day of trying not to yell at his new boss about how he’d stolen Sasha’s job and was being a dick about it, he just wanted to sit down in front of the telly with a beer and some trashy tv. Maybe a good old-fashioned murder mystery, with poisonings or stabbings and absolutely no spooky shit or fucking clowns.

With this thought in mind, on this perfectly ordinary Tuesday he steps out of the tube station into a light drizzle, and therefore decides to pop into the shop on the corner for his beer and take the short-cut home rather than detouring to the Sainsburys. There’s not a lot of choice in the corner-shop, but it’s not like he’s ever been fussy. Besides, Danny had gotten into real ale at one point, and somehow managed not to be an entire prick about it, and the cheap shit doesn’t bring with it any memories of him waving his hands over a pub table as he tries to explain to Tim varieties of hops and how maybe he’ll start a microbrewery.  


Later, he’ll wonder if it happens _because_ he’s thinking about Danny at the time.

Either way, as he cuts down the street behind the church, the flimsy plastic of the bag splits entirely, depositing four cans of shitty beer directly onto the slightly damp ground. Well, that’s just this day all over. He picks the cans up, balls up the useless bag and looks up to see a bin on the other side of the road. Beer under one arm, he crosses over. The house the bin is in front of has the sort of tiny shabby front garden and peeling paint around the door which suggests that nobody has lived in it that gives a damn for some time. Resting on top of the fence is a crudely painted wooden box with the words TAKE A BOOK, READ A BOOK scrawled along the front, sort of a community library sort of thing, he guesses.

_take a book_

Disposing of the bag, he glances in it. There is only one book, and almost automatically he places the beer down on the fence and reaches for it. He would expect the sort of dog-eared novels you find abandoned in holiday homes or lining the shelves of charity shops, but it looks older. The cover is a dark green and faded gold letters spell out the title of THE WONDROUS COMPENDIUM OF EXQUISITE KNOWLEDGE in an elaborate font.

_read a book_

He opens it. On the inside there is no title page, no author, no table of contents. Instead, in bold black capitals, it reads:  
EVERYTHING YOU WANT TO KNOW, AND ARE AFRAID TO KNOW.

He turns the page. 

YOU WANT TO KNOW WHAT REALLY HAPPENED TO DANIEL STOKER  
IT WILL NOT MAKE YOU HAPPY  
IT WILL NOT MAKE YOU SAFE  
IT WILL NOT MAKE THINGS BETTER  
TURN THE PAGE

Tim shuts the book. It feels like it takes all his strength to do so, like he has to fight his own body to stop it just reaching out and turning to the next page, but he shuts the book. The golden title, and the emblem of the lidless eye that accompanies it, glows under the street lights.

_take a book, read a book_

He shoves it into the bin, after the plastic bag, snatches up his beer, and walks home _fast_. He drinks a beer. He drinks all the beer. He forces himself to eat some of the leftovers in the fridge. He sits in front of the TV and pays half attention to Attenborough talking about zebras, then half-pays attention to the banter between old-cop-brought-out-of-retirement and new-cop-with-something-to-prove, and then he turns it off and stares at the blank screen for about half an hour before he decides to just try and go to sleep.

* * *

“It’s not like there’s anything else you _really_ want to know,” the woman says, sitting on the side of his bed. The book is resting on her lap. “We don’t mind if you take some time to think about it. We’ve never been able to get close to the Archive before. That nasty little parasite gets territorial, even though we’re all part of one terrible Knowing.” 

She is nobody he recognises. Blonde hair, middle-aged. Nothing particularly notable in her face. Her voice rasps like the turning of old pages.

“Oh, well, you wouldn’t know.” she says. “This is just who we ate before you. She worked in computers, which we thought might be interesting to Know even if they are probably full of spiders. She wanted to know _what they thought about her_. She wasn’t very tasty, in the end. We do hope you’ll be better.”

Tim opens his mouth, but nothing comes out.

She reaches over and strokes his forehead. “There’s no need. We know everything about you. Well, except how long it will take you to turn the page. That will be a fun thing to learn together, won’t it? Now, you better wake up, or you’ll be late for work.”

He wakes up, dry-mouthed. Looks at his phone for the time. _Fuck_.

Somehow he manages to get into the office just on the verge of on time. Jon is already busy recording a statement, if the sarcasm leaking from under his office door is any guide, which means that he has time to get himself sorted. Martin slides a cup of tea onto his desk, because he is far too good for this world, generally, and far too nice to be working here, specifically.

There is the same pile of paperwork on his desk from yesterday – addresses to be checked, people to be traced, and he falls into the general pattern of sending emails and making phonecalls, marking things down as confirmed, unconfirmed, and fucking dead end and waste of my time. Underneath the file for the statement he’s been working on, which is definitely in the fucking dead end waste of my time category, there’s a book. There’s _the_ book. No way he’s dealing with it right now. He opens his desk drawer, shoves it in there, and closes the drawer again.

“We’re offering you exactly what you want.” the man says. He’s leaning on a bookshelf, and definitely not really there, as neither Sasha nor Martin seem to notice him. He’s young and well-muscled, wearing a tight black t-shirt and jeans. Handsome, if it wasn’t for the unsettling eyes. “Yes, we thought this might be more to your preference. He was a soldier. He wanted to know _if there really was a God_. He regretted it the moment he turned the page.”

“Not really fucking convincing me here.” Tim mutters at his computer screen.

“We like to be honest.” the man says. “There’s no need for untruths, is there? The knowledge you want is terrible, and you should fear it. Knowing it will hurt. You know that. You want it, and you fear it, and you cannot stop yourself wanting, or fearing. It’s exceedingly delicious.”

Tim very deliberately breaks eye contact, because fuck this.

“One of the things you want to know is: why him, and not you?” the man says, and is gone by the time Tim looks back up.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No matter what else is happening, there's always Worms.

That evening, he takes the book home, puts it onto the grill out on the common gardens with an entire pack of firestarters and half a bottle of lighter fluid and sets the whole fucking lot on fire.

It’s quite impressive. One of his neighbours complains about the smoke, but the book is fine. Not even singed.

“We contain multitudes.” a young girl informs him. “We’re not actually made of paper. If you really insist, though, we’ll leave you be for a little while. Fear gets sweeter the longer you let it cook. Like caramelizing onions.”

A child. A fucking child. Tim has a new plan for dealing with this thing, and it involves explosives.

“Most children don’t know enough unique information to make them tasty at all, true.” the girl says. He thinks she is maybe ten – was maybe ten? “But we can make exceptions if the _want to know_ is strong enough. She wanted to know _how to make it stop_. So you see, we do understand revenge.”

He can’t bring himself to throw anything at the face it’s wearing, so he glares at it and hopes the message gets across.

“You want to know: is there any way I can make it hurt the way it hurt me?” she says, brightly. “The answer is: yes. Turn the page to find out more!”

* * *

For a little while after that, it does leave him alone. Or at least, he doesn’t have any more of those hallucination-and-or-haunting experiences which make him wonder if he should be making a statement. He only considers this idea seriously for about thirty seconds. Sure, give Jon the chance to read over his trauma and declare it made-up idiocy. That’ll help.

After the fire, he tries water (it floats) and just tearing it up (it gives him a papercut), and once considers mailing it to the Will It Blend guy. He does keep tossing it in various bins whenever he gets a chance, not because it does anything but as a generalised fuck-you. There’s a particularly nasty dumpster out the back of the fried chicken place which is always propped open, and he’s gotten to the point where he can lob it in from the street on the way home, barely breaking his stride. Stupid book is usually sitting on his kitchen table when he gets home anyway, but it’s the principle of the thing.

He thinks about Danny a lot. He dreams, again and again, of that night, that dark and half-obscured memory, screams thickening in his throat. He does, all things considered, a fairly shitty job of his actual job, but luckily Jon seems to be too busy being rude to Martin and sarcastic at statements to notice.

Sasha does notice, and he doesn’t really want to lie to her. She also knows just enough that when he says, quite honestly, that he’s been thinking about his brother a lot, she pats him on the shoulder and lets him steal all the custard creams from the biscuit tin, and lets him be.

So that’s that. There is a book lying on his bed. There’s a book on his kitchen table. There’s a book on the shelf when he’s looking for something else. They’re all the same book, and he does not open it, and he does not turn the page, and he does not stop dreaming of that knowledge so dark and awful, filling him up from the inside, _finally_ making him complete.

He also finds himself avoiding caramelised onions.

* * *

And then there are worms.

It would almost be funny to see Jon confronted with an actual, undeniable paranormal event if said paranormal event wasn’t disgusting, and also traumatising Martin. Tim finds himself drinking three times as much tea as usual simply because making and distributing hot beverages is the one thing that reliably calms Martin down. _You_ try saying no to that face.

Besides the constant nightmares, the book has been leaving him mostly alone. So he’s pretty surprised when he’s strolling back into the Institute after lunch, no more than ten minutes after he should be back, and someone grabs him and pushes him up against the nearest wall.

It’s the eyes that give it away. Fuck, it has a body now?

“We don’t bother normally. Too close to Meat. Tiring. Easier now, with you to anchor us.” This man is tall, sort of handsome in an older Clint Eastwood sort of way. “This one was a killer. He wanted to know _how to kill more_. Simplistic, but useful.”

He fucking takes back _handsome_. “Greeeeeat. That’s. That’s just great. Thanks so much for the info.”

“There are worms. They are rude. This will kill them.”

_Rude_? he thinks, as he looks down and sees a fire extinguisher being pushed into his hands.

“If they eat you then we can’t, and we’re really looking forward to eating you. Rude. It should be against the rules.” The man hefts a second fire extinguisher in one hand, a third strapped to his—its—back, and a large mallet in the other hand. “We will kill all the worms now.”

Wait, if it was waiting outside the Institute—“The worms are _in_ the Archives? Sasha, Martin, Jon—are they okay?”

It looks to be thinking for a moment. “They are alive. The worms want to eat them from the inside out.”

So that’s a _no_ , then.

He vaguely remembers Rosie looking surprised as he sprints past her, carrying a fire extinguisher, and then a woman who sets every one of his nerves screaming _this is bad!_ , which given that he’s being haunted by an evil book says a _lot_.

The rest is just a lot of yelling, and a lot of worms.

The last thing he remembers, before waking up to hazmat suits and Elias explaining how he really did try to get the fire system going before they all got turned into worm food, honest, is it leaning over him and gently murmuring something about gifts, about knowledge being power.

He doesn’t dream of worms.

Worms might have been better.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The evil book doesn't really like being corporeal, which is the most relatable thing about it, but it also doesn't like worms in its food.
> 
> Note: In this version of reality, Sasha is fine and well except for a couple of worm scars, because I said so that's why. The NotThem can [REDACTED]. Elias still strolled down to the CO2 controls and sat there with his hand on a button Watching Jon get semi-eaten by worms before he pressed it, because he's a complete bastard in all versions of reality.


End file.
